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Panther senior wrestlers go out in style

RIVERSIDE — The Snake River grapplers met with the North Fremont and Malad teams Wednesday night at the Snake River gymnasium. The night was dedicated to the SR seniors and their accomplishments. The seniors are Jake Frost, SkyLerr Valentine, Jordan Campau, Shawn Turpin, Zane Stephenson, Logan Reynolds, Cash Cardona, Tyson Hansen, Carlos Molina, and Gunner Bott. Annie Whittier is the senior statistician and was also honored. When asked how he felt about this year’s seniors, Coach Gardner said, “they really came out and wrestled tonight. We asked them to work hard and they did. We had a great leadership from our seniors this year and they really helped the underclassmen along. We are going to take a big hit with them leaving after this year and it will be hard to fill their shoes.”

The varsity matches started with SR wrestling North Fremont. After several forfeits by the North Fremont team, the matches began at 132. North Fremont would win the first two matches which would end with wins by points. Zane Stephenson would wrestle Estaban Lozano at 152. Zane would take the lead in the first round 8-0 and would be in control the whole match. He would rack up the points to 11-0 in the second round and then tech him at the buzzer. Cash Cardona would wrestle Conner Morris at the 160 weight class next. Cardona would seemingly easily pin Morris with 1:16 left in the first round. Carlos Molina was up next at 170 against Riley Bolin. Molina would pin his opponent with 52 seconds left in the first round. Snake River was on a roll. Morgan Smith would follow up with a pin against Fili Labra with 1:52 left in the first round. SR would drop their next few matches but would end with a score of 47-27 over North Fremont.
River would then face Malad. The matches would begin at 98 with SR’s Treyton Nilsson against Dallin Ward. Nilsson would dominate the match and by the end of the second round, the score was 7-1 and with 15 seconds left, Nilsson got the pin. Jake Frost would be up next against Carson McClain. Frost would use his experience to get near fall after near fall and would pin him with 1:02 left in the second round. Skylerr Valentine would be up next against Wesley Peterson. Valentine would also dominate this match and by the end of the second round, the score was already 13-1 when Valentine pinned Peterson with 3 seconds left. River Stephenson would take on Derek Checketts in a nail-biter. Stephenson was up most of the rounds but lost control late in the third round. He was able to wrestle thru, execute the defense and pull out an 8-4 win. Wyatt Vogler would then come up at 132 against Gabe Cobabe. Vogler would pin Cobabe with 1:18 left in the first round. Cheers could be heard from the lobby! Cash Cardona would make quick work of his opponent and pin (:45) him and Carlos Molina would do the same (1:15) to his opponent. The last match of the evening would by Gunner Bott against Daniel Creagor. Bott would take the lead in the first round 4-1 and as the crowd cheered him on…got the pin with 20 seconds left. Snake River would win over Malad 62 to 21. The Snake River varsity team travels to Rupert this weekend for the Minico Invitational running Friday and Saturday. The junior varsity will be attending a tournament in Kimberly.